December 1, 1999

HILLARY,
THE MAD BOMBER

Okay,
so even I occasionally get sick  that doesn't mean I can't write a few
paragraphs.

TURTLES
UNITE!

Indeed, here I am, feverish, coughing, and even
a little delirious, but with plenty to write about: they're sure having fun
up in Seattle, huh? Who would've thought green turtles had such strong opinions
about the WTO?

IT TAKES
A HILLARY TO CARPETBOMB A VILLAGE

Gail
Sheehy's new book on Hillary Rodham Clinton is not something I would normally
cover in this space, but one little item revealed in the text is a veritable
blockbuster: it seems that Hillary hadn't spoken to Bill for quite some
time after l'affaire Lewinsky, but that she finally broke down and phoned him
to demand that he start the bombing of Yugoslavia tout de suite! In a
chat with Dateline. Sheehy reveals that Hil refused to speak to the President
for eight solid months  but broke her silence, one day in March of this
year, and took on her aspect as Hillary the war goddess  demanding Serb
blood as the price of their reconciliation. According to Sheehy, "The day
after she said that, he [Bill Clinton] announced that he was informing his NATO
allies that he was recommending a bombing campaign."

THE WICKED
WITCH OF WAR

Hillary
Clinton, bitch goddess of the Third Way, a bloodthirsty and vengeful witch whose
malevolence is apparent even to her political supporters  you couldn't
ask for a better symbol of the War Party than old Hil.

OUR ARROGANT
ELITES

The
tidal wave of vituperation unleashed against Pat Buchanan seems to have died
down, at least for the moment  I mean, how long can they keep recycling
the same old smears? So now they're moving on to his supporters in the Reform
Party, notably Lenora Fulani, the first black presidential candidate to get
on all fifty state ballots and a leftist who has nonetheless endorsed Buchanan's
candidacy as a way to break up the two-party duopoly. Now, suddenly, we are
being inundated with lurid magazine articles  like the
recent hatchet job in the New Republic  which
details the history of the New Alliance Party, the former name of Fulani's group:
suddenly all the usual left-wing "anti-extremist" "experts"
like the omnipresent Chip Berlet, are being trotted out to describe the Fulani
group as a "cult" of (gasp!) "Marxists": the New Republic
piece (which I'll deal with at length in a future column) literally seethes
with contempt for Fulani, who, it seems, is not "legitimate" enough
for the imperious David Grann. The whole point of the piece seems to be: how
dare Fulani and her associates get into politics at all?! Who do they
think they are? Politics belongs to the elites  not to some black woman
"with hoop earrings" (Grann notes) who is representative of "the
fringe." Surely such arrogance is going to garner Fulani more sympathy
than anything else, at least from ordinary people  but, then again, what
ordinary person ever reads the New Republic? (Which is why Marty Peretz
 or, more accurately, his rich wife, has to subsidize that rag to keep
it going).

WHAT IT
MEANS TO BE A LIBERTARIAN: OR, BUYING POLITICIANS FOR FUN & PROFIT

I
also note that today's New York Times op ed page has yet another
hit piece on the Buchanan-Fulani alliance, this
time by Roger Pilon, of the "libertarian" Cato Institute. The
spin is that campaign finance reform is a bad idea, because public financing
has led to "the unholy alliance of Patrick Buchanan and Lenora Fulani.
"These two politicians, who have garnered almost no public support of late,
may be given a prominent platform next year." Of course, the chief backer
of the Cato Institute, billionaire Charles Koch, buys Republican politicians
by the dozen, and would like to be able to keep doing so  but that, naturally,
has nothing whatever to do with Pilon's article.

POLITICIANS
FOR SALE

The
irony is that Buchanan, and even Fulani, have more support than the wacko Libertarian
Party, which nominated Koch's brother, David, as its vice presidential candidate
in 1980. The Koch Combine poured millions into the LP and allied institutions,
but turned to Republicans when it became clear that the GOP was a more reliable
route to power. Contrary to Mr. Pilon  who is described as Cato's "vice
president for legal affairs"  there is nothing in the least bit "libertarian"
about allowing billionaires and transnational corporations to buy up every politician
in sight.

MONEY
CAN'T BUY YOU LOVE

How
pathetic: Pilon, the servitor of Koch and his chief henchman, Cato President
Ed Crane, cannot conceive that Buchanan could be going after the Reform nomination
out of a sense of principle, or because he wants to build an alternative political
movement  oh no, it's because of "the $13 million pot of public money
that will go to the Reform Party's nominee." But, somehow, Pilon doesn't
mention that the two "major" parties get more than that just
to run their presidential nominating conventions. Of course, libertarians
are opposed to that, too  but, somehow, Pilon forgot to mention
it.

ASK DAVID

Pilon
reminds the supporters of public financing that the original campaign reform
legislation enacted in 1974 was "supposed to shore up the two-party system,"
and yet, horror of horrors, "Mr. Buchanan and Ms. Fulani, who stand to
gain so much from public financing, recently called for breaking the 'iron grip'
of the two-party system." If I were Pilon, I would ask my benefactor, David
Koch, about the iron grip of the two-party system  and how many legal
hurdles, how many millions of dollars, how many tens of thousands of petition
signatures, how many unreasonable deadlines it took to get his name on the ballot
in all fifty states.

INQUIRING
MINDS WANT TO KNOW

Why
is Cato so hot on the God-given right of billionaires to buy up politicians?
Your guess is as good as mine  but maybe Cato's policy analysts should
take a look at a few of their sugar daddy's special deals with the U.S. government,
including the outright seizure of native American lands, and tell us how this
is "libertarianism" in action.

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